Bad To The Bone

When I was a teenager to look at me you would have thought that I was a right little shit. I had black hair. Or pink hair. Or green hair. I dressed like a hobo. I listened to loud angry music. I had fake tattoos drawn on my arms with ball point pen. It wasn’t pretty. But if you thought that you would have been very wrong. I was a terrible goody two shoes. A regular ass kisser.

I was always respectful and polite to adults. I never shoplifted in my life. EVER. Not once did I sneak out of the house to meet my friends at the park to drink our parent’s booze. Basically I was a loser within my loser crowd. I didn’t fit in anywhere.

I did have a boyfriend when I was sixteen who was quite a bit older than me. He was nineteen and had a car. This was a great worry to my folks even though I assured them that he was more immature than all of my degenerate friends combined. They really had nothing to worry about. I had a very good head on my shoulders and was rarely ever swayed by peer pressure. But you know how parents are. You might even be one yourself and be tsk tsking right now.

I am sure my folks imagined all sorts of terrible things as I drove off in that bright orange Ford Fiesta hatchback but I can honestly say that most of our date time was spent eating junk food at McDonalds. Seriously. We would go to the local Mickey D’s and eat a full meal. I would do this even after eating a full dinner at home. Quite often we would then go to ANOTHER McDonalds to have dessert. I know. Ooooh. Exciting. It is a wonder I wasn’t the size of a house. That is the horrible ‘shenanigans’ I would get up to. And it gets better. Then we would go to his house. His parental house. To watch TV. With his mom and sister. Heady stuff.

I used to walk home from school and walk by this house that had this decrepit flamingo in the front yard. It was a dingy grey with moss growing on it. So sad. So tempting. I had this thing for flamingoes at the time and I started to covet that flamingo in a very serious way. This sinful thinking changed me. For the worse.

One night as I was picked up for our usual fat filled dinner date I surprised myself by suggesting to my boyfriend that we nick that poor flamingo under the cover of darkness and give it a good home in my bedroom. He was shocked but he agreed. We drove up and he sat in the car with the motor running and back door open while I calmly walked up onto the yard and nonchalantly went to pick up my prize. I grabbed hold and pulled expecting the ornament to easily come free and nearly pulled my arms out of their sockets. The thing was seriously anchored. Oh shit. I yanked again and it came free. But something was wrong. It was not the light plastic flamingo I thought it was. My eyes had not been able to see some very important details on my daily walks. The fucking thing was molded cement and the legs were rebar. The thing probably weighed about as much as me. I had started running to the car half carrying and half dragging my flamingo laughing hysterically when I saw headlights coming up the road. A car was coming. I didn’t worry about it much as I was partially shielded by bushes and anybody driving by would not be able to see what I was up to. However Stupid Older Brave Boyfriend panicked and STARTED TO DRIVE OFF!!!!

OH SHIT! That asshole. I knew he had to be dumped as no self respecting boyfriend (even one with a car) would drive off leaving his very cute girlfriend holding the bird. It also crossed my mind that it would be so typical that the only time I had ever done anything even remotely illegal I would totally be abandoned by a total pussy and left to take the heat. I always new that I was not meant for a life a crime and any lapse would result in a juvenile record and being grounded until I was 40. It had been so obvious. Why hadn’t I listened?

Fortunately for me (and him) he stopped about half a block up the road with me frantically running/dragging/gasping behind him. I threw that bad boy in the back seat nicely ripping his upholstery with a rebar leg. Ha ha ha!!! We took off and that was the anticlimactic end to my night of crime.

I stashed my loot down the side of my house planning to wash off the moss and paint it up to the glory it deserved. Before I could do that my brother used it for target practice and chipped it into an unrecognizable lump. I had risked my good name (even though I didn’t look like I had one) for nothing.